


Shocks

by Rainbow_Femme



Category: Fargo (2014)
Genre: M/M, Unseen violence, confirmed relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 04:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3635877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainbow_Femme/pseuds/Rainbow_Femme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being captured by enemies of Fargo, Numbers is interrogated by a man interested in a new method of interrogation and persuasion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shocks

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually my second Wrenchers fic based on a psychological study. They make for great inspiration.

Numbers groaned as he slowly woke up, his right temple pounding and his right arm pressed in an uncomfortable position. He groaned. Great, he had to carry around guns, bodies, and talk to his partner with his arms, and now one was hurt. He would never get a chance to rest it and it would probably be sore for weeks. With blurry vision, he tried to get a sense of his surroundings. He was in the car with Wrench, only they weren't on the road anymore. Last he remembered, they had been driving down the road normally, Numbers complaining to himself about how much he hated the early March slush. Now the hood of the car was crumpled around the trunk of a tree, and they seemed to be tilted at a strange angle. Dimly he tried moving, rotating in his seat for a better look around, but a sharp pain in his head stopped him and left him gasping for air, nauseous. Leaning back against the window that was stained with what he assumed was some of his blood, he gave another attempt at catching his breath and stopping the black dots swimming in front of his eyes. 

When he opened them again he looked to Wrench, who was slumped against the steering wheel. His nose was bleeding and dripping down his shirt, and it didn't look like he would be waking up any time soon. The airbag had deflated around him, and Numbers guessed it must have been what broke Wrench's nose. It would be a nightmare getting him into a car again. Wrench broke his arm once when he was twelve falling off a bicycle and had never touched one since, he was not very delighted by the thought of having to convince him to get back into a car after one nearly killed the both of them.

Hearing footsteps crunching through the snow, he tried to remember if they had any visible guns or body parts anywhere in the car. Usually they didn't, on the off chance a police officer stopped them, but they had packed up and left tiredly in the middle of the night and he couldn't quite remember what had gone in the back seat and what had gone in the trunk. Hopefully if they hadn't cleaned all the blood out from the last hit, anyone coming to help would just assume it was theirs.

The passenger door abruptly swung open, eliciting another pained groan from him as he shifted into a better position. He looked up into the glaring early morning light to give a pleasant, not-a-murderer-for-hire thank you to whomever had opened it, but was quickly stopped by the butt of a gun hitting him square in the nose, sending him back into unconsciousness.

Waking the second time, Numbers was in a decidedly more sour mood. This time he was not in his car, but propped up in an old wooden chair by what felt like a strap around his chest, and the fluorescent lights above his head were far too bright for their own good. Squinting past the pain in his head and the lights, he saw a man about Wrench's age sitting in a chair opposite him, straddling it backwards so he could rest his hands along its back, watching him contentedly.

"Hey there, welcome back to the land of the living. Sorry about the whole breaking your nose with the gun thing, but we didn't think you'd come along willingly." He smiled pleasantly, showing off a row of too brightly white teeth and Numbers wanted to spit at him. He hated guys like this. Guys that tried to be James Bond villains, acting all suave and unaffected, like they were just having a nice chat with you before they were going to kill you. It was such an annoying act that spent way too much time beating around the bush trying to look cool. He himself may joke around a bit on the job, but he was never smarmy like this guy. He preferred guys like Wrench who just hit you, asked questions, then hit you again until you answered them. Or until your mammoth of a partner came busting in and killed everyone.

"Now," the man continued, clapping his hands together. "You are probably wondering why you're here, and why we ran you off the road in the first place."

Numbers nodded slowly, the memory of the accident slowly coming back. A black sedan pulling next to them out of nowhere and swerving at them, making Wrench jerk the wheel to avoid being hit. "I've got a couple guesses."

"Good!" The man clapped again and got up, going over to a card table and pouring himself some coffee. "Have you ever heard of Stanley Milgram, Mr. Numbers?"

Numbers blinked a moment, a little confused by the sudden detour in their conversation. "That depends. He a friend of yours? If we killed him, sorry."

The man chuckled and turned back towards him, adding sugar to his coffee. "No, no, he was a psychologist in the sixties. He got rather famous after carrying out a... Controversial study over at Yale University." He turned his chair around to face Numbers and sat in it, sipping his drink casually. "Ever heard of it?"

Numbers sighed and leaned back, settling in for looked to be the beginnings of a very long chat, not in the mood for this. "Can't say I have, no." By now, he and Wrench should have been home and in bed, clocking a good twelve hours of sleep.

The man shrugged and took another sip. "That's ok, not a lot of people have. The study was done because of the Nuremberg trials." He paused, gauging Number's reaction. "I'm sure you've heard of those."

Numbers stilled, looking at him warily. "Yeah, I've heard of them."

The man smiled like a teacher tutoring a young pupil. "Good. Now, the study was done because many of the men on trial claimed that they committed all of the atrocities during the holocaust because they were just following orders. And Dr. Milgram, he wanted to see just how far a man would go to follow orders."

A strange thumping noise came from the room to Numbers' right that made the man smile, which made Numbers uneasy as the man continued speaking. "He got people to sign up to come in and be 'teachers' in his study. They were put in a room with a man in a lab coat, some questions written down, and a board with switches in front of them." Another strange thumping noise, harder this time, and another unsettling smile. "There was a man in the other room, they were told. A man connected to electrodes. They were to ask him questions. If he got one wrong, they were to shock him. Every time he got one wrong, they were to go up another level of electricity as punishment. The levels ranged from slight, to dangerous, to something simply labeled with three Xs."

Numbers nodded. "So other than a Psych 101 lesson, why am I here?"

The man simply continued to smile that sickly sweet smile. "I'm getting there. Now, the man in the other room was not actually connected to anything, he was an actor, but they didn't know that. So the study began, they asked the questions and if the man got it wrong, they shocked him. He'd yelp, they'd go on. Only, after a couple shocks, the man, he starts yelling he wants to stop. So the person in the study, they'd ask if it was over. The man in the lab coat would say no, they had to continue. And they would continue."

Another strange noise, this time with an audible grunt.Numbers swallowed, his palms beginning to sweat. "Then the man would say he had a heart condition and shouldn't be doing this. Again, the people would show concern, but the man in the lab coat would tell them to continue. He would hit the walls, yell his chest was hurting, yell for help, then simply start screaming in pain. But the man in the lab coat told them to continue, so they would."

The noise came again, and this time Numbers recognized its owner as Wrench, ice filling his veins. The man seemed to notice this, and continued. "Now, the man in the lab coat was not a real doctor, simply an actor as well. But he seemed to those in the study to have authority, so they continued. They had already been payed for being part of the study and were told they could keep it no matter what happened, so they didn't stay for money. Not everyone continued, but many did. This man with no more authority than anyone else told them to, so they listened. They were willing to risk killing some innocent person because they were told to."

The noise came again and the ground beneath Number's feet shook as Wrench hit the floor, eliciting another groan. Numbers was trembling. He didn't know what they were doing to him, but it was bad. His chest ached to not be there, not be helping Wrench, knowing he was alone and someone was hurting him and he was here, uselessly listening to this man drabble on.

The man leaned forward. "The people you work for, over in Fargo. They're those men in lab coats. They have no more authority than you give them. You do what they tell you, you protect them when interrogated, but why? They're men, just like you. What makes them worthy of that protection and you only worthy of their dirty work? Of being willing to die for them?" He sat back, no longer as friendly. "Here's where we diverge from Dr. Milgram's study. You know the man in the other room, and you know we are actually hurting him. But like that study, his pain is based on your actions alone. You can agree to tell us what we want to know about Fargo, and we'll let you both go. The longer you stall, the worse it is for him. Hitting like this is only the beginning. We have things in there, things that will make him hurt. And you will sit here, and you will listen to them all. In the end, you walk out either way, we won't stop you. But whether you walk out with him or alone is your choice. Don't be another man at the switchboard, doing what you're told. Save him, and this will all be over."

Numbers swallowed, trying to compose himself. "What makes you think I care if he dies or not? We work together, that's it." He tried not to wince when there was another thumping noise, along with the scraping of what sounded like someone being dragged before another louder thump.

The man smiled, as if he were waiting for this question, hoping for it. He took a folded piece of paper from his pocket and unfurled it with a flourish, holding it so Numbers could see. It was a printed out picture from a cell phone. His cell phone. It was a picture he had taken a few months ago, around Christmas. The snow had been falling and getting in their hair and Wrench wanted to take a picture. Numbers had agreed if he scrunched down or else he wouldn't be able to get Wrench in the picture. Wrench was supposed to be smiling like Numbers, but at the last minute had turned his head and planted a kiss on his cheek instead. Numbers had pretended to complain about him ruining it but kept it in his phone all the same, refusing to delete it. They weren't in the habit of having many pictures around their place, they couldn't afford to take them if they had to pick up and leave and it was best to leave as little evidence of themselves as possible, so Numbers had hoarded some on his phone for the occasional night they weren't together.

Once he was satisfied with his reaction, the man leaned back, refolding the picture and putting it in his pocket. "Tracking you Fargo boys wasn't hard, the Cloud makes that pretty easy these days. The problem was, we had to find two of you that cared about each other enough to actually care whether the other died or not. Mostly, you were all clean. Communicating in short texts that wouldn't give anything away, using your computers to look up addresses and directions. Very by the book. We thought we would need a new plan, maybe tailing you. Much more dangerous and much less convenient. But then we found you two. You, who take pictures of yourselves like this, send each other messages outside of work, only when you're not together, which seemed to be almost constantly. A gold mine."

Numbers shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Wrench had been knocked over again and this time it sounded like it had taken him much longer to get up again. He didn't know just how badly he'd been hurt in the wreck, so these could be just painful blows or possibly aggravating already very serious injuries. He looked back at the man silently, who shook his head disappointedly.

"No more pretense of not caring, please. It's wasting both of our time, but more importantly, causing your friend much discomfort."

Numbers cleared his throat, trying to block out a muffled cry of pain from the other room. He knew he should stall for time, come up with a plan, but knowing the longer he took the worse they hurt Wrench, that brought him up short. "What do you want to know?"

The man smiled, pressing a button on his watch. Numbers heard a faint beeping in the other room and the noises stopped, leaving only Wrench's ragged breathing. "You see? Not just consequences, rewards for good behavior too. Now. We would like the names, the real names, of those in charge. We also want to know where your headquarters are. We don't want to kill anyone we don't have to, but we do want those at the top taken care of."

Numbers nodded stiffly. "Why?" He tried to keep track of Wrench's breathing, straining to hear if it sounded like his ribs were broken or a lung punctured.

The man smiled. "Because we want to take their place. The problem with this business is it doesn't move with the invisible hand of capitalism as everything else does. You can't just have a bunch of murder for hire businesses and hope people will go to whichever has the best customer service and happiest employees. There can only be one group in charge at a time, or else, well, this exact scenario happens. We want to be in charge and we want to change things. Things that will benefit men like you and your partner, I assure you. No more stiff men in lab coats. We're all on an even playing field." He sat back, waiting for Number's answer. Numbers watched his hand twitch towards the button, ready to tell them to hurt Wrench again if he didn't cooperate.

Numbers was tempted to spit at him. Curse at him. Tell him he might as well kill him for all the information he'd get out of him. But after a moment, he wondered why? What was it to him who his boss was? Why did everything have to be a fight to the death? It wasn't like his bosses particularly liked him or Wrench anyway. In fact, there had been a number of homophobic remarks sent their way over the years as well as every job no one else wanted. Getting on the good side of new bosses would get them sent on better jobs and if they died trying? They probably wouldn't get the chance to tell anyone Numbers had been the snitch, so who cared? Right now, he needed to get Wrench out and taken care of and it didn't look like brawn would do the trick this time.

"Sure, ok."

The man leaned back, stunned for a moment, his smile faltering. Numbers smiled, figuring that wasn't what he had expected. "Really?"

Numbers shrugged. "You're right. It's no skin off my nose who my bosses are." He began listing off names and addresses, the man quickly writing them down as fast as Numbers said them, sending them off with an assistant to confirm them, looking at Numbers a little stunned.

"I have to be honest, I thought this would be a... Longer process. We were prepared to be much rougher with your partner than we have been."

Numbers shrugged. "You were right. Wrench is important to me. The only person important to me. Everyone else is replaceable. But you're going to have to do a lot to make me forget what you've done to him in there."

The man nodded rapidly. "Understood. Though you understand why I had to do all of this, of course?"

Numbers felt one side of his mouth turn up slightly. "Of course. We're murderers, after all. I don't expect the best manners. But if he is seriously injured, I can't promise I won't put a bullet in your head sometime in the future."

As the assistant returned, the man half turned to him. "How is our guest in the other room doing?"

The man gave him a sheet of paper. "Pissed, waving his hands around all weird. No one really wants to get too close of a look."

The man chuckled. "But alright, I hope?"

The man nodded. "He can take a punch, it seems. Besides some bruises and maybe some hurt pride, he's fine. It's kinda hard to beat a guy like that up, like wrestling with a damn bear." Numbers noticed an angry red mark on the assistants forehead that had begun to bruise and suppressed a chuckle, happy Wrench had gotten a couple swings in.

After the information Numbers gave them checked out, he was lead outside, the door immediately closing behind him. He went to pound on it, demand his partner, but Wrench was soon pushed out another door to his right. They both ran to each other, grabbing on for a brief moment before trying to asses the damage on the other. Numbers noted a black eye and some bruising around Wrench's ribs along with his already broken nose, and Wrench felt gently over Numbers' head and checked for a concussion before letting him explain that they hadn't hurt him after getting him in the room. Wrench just nodded and hugged him again fiercely, inhaling slowly. Numbers knew he would have a lot to explain to Wrench later, and that was fine. Wrench would understand. Wrench was probably the only one in the syndicate out of everyone that would understand if Numbers told them. Because, smarmy as the man was, he'd been right. The others didn't care about each other. It was a job. They would have let their partners die if they knew it meant walking out and job security. But Wrench and Numbers didn't have that option; they never had. They were the only two people that mattered, so if they had to sell someone out to ensure the other would be safe, there was no question. Was Numbers angry as hell that they had hurt Wrench? Yes. Would he ever choose to like or trust those men? No. But his choice was not about them, it was about what was best for Wrench. So if they got some new bosses that ran things a little different, that was just fine by him.

Wrench slung an arm around his shoulders and they began walking back to town, Numbers groaning a bit when Wrench asked if they could take a bus rather than rent another car. He sadly realized this probably meant he would have to delete all of his pictures off his phone, but he wondered if he might find a printer before then. A couple pieces of paper in his pocket or the bottom of his suitcase wouldn't be so inconvenient.


End file.
